dhw: The question BBella has raised is really what we understand by God. David tries hard not to give his God any human attributes, which is a far cry from Tony's version. For me, a god without human attributes might just as well be a great blob of mindless energy, since his existence will be irrelevant to mine, and mine to him.-My approach to God's personality is more nuanced than your description. I do not try to describe aspects of personality to God because I do not accept writers in the Bible descriptions of Him. They only anthropomorphize Him. Only if God would supply a list of his characteristics can we ever be sure of His feelings and intentions. Do I think God is interested in us? Yes, very much. Does he love all of us without reservation? I doubt it. Our brains are free to invent bad, evil things to do. With that freedom, He has to be like every parent, willing to forgive if there is change to the good. I recognize these as my suppositions. Adler's postion was 50/50% whether God took an interest in every prayer. He was cautious like I am. But I pray.

Dhw addressing Tony: Your own image of the orchestra was a good one: [...]That is how I see evolution ... not pre-planned, but building intelligently to ever greater complexity, as it combines individual inventions.-Creation might also be considered like an orchestra in another way: Differing elements (instruments) became aware and began to cooperate in an intelligent harmony with each other, that over time, combined in ever greater complexity creating a vibrational scale that eventually became the music of life. -Some could call this whole action God or some might call it evolution, panpsychism, etc. Whether this happening was one harmonious being that created the harmony of all that is, or one harmonious orchestra that created the harmony of all that is, still, all that is is ONE harmonious creation, whatever you choose to call it.

DHW: Then I wonder why you only mentioned randomness and competition.-Because your hypothesis demands all three, but there is no room for randomness and competition at the lowest levels. Elementary particles and sub-atomic particles behave with exacting precision within very specific tolerances. It is this very thing that makes science as we know it even possible. That type of precision does not happen among individuals cooperating without some common purpose, practice, or guidance. Cooperation, perfectly executed, could indeed do great things, hence the reason I left it alone, however, it is not sufficient to explain the observations.-> 
> TONY: The problem is that cooperation does not explain the unity of the design, not to mention exponentially complicating the issue of 'first intelligence' by making it happen not once, but numerous times.
> 
> Design entails different elements combining into a functioning unit. -Correction: Design entails combining different elements into a functioning unit.-What you described is straight Darwinian evolution. -The engineer doesn't allow stuff to happen without pre-planning. Neither does he throw sticks in a pile and expect a house to appear. Rather, he studies his building materials intently, learning everything there is to know about them, and then uses that knowledge to put them together in an arrangement that suits the purpose he is trying to achieve. Information BEFORE implementation, not information FROM implementation.-> 
> You wrote: "The Genome is a chunk of code that reacts the way that it is programmed to react." Does this mean your God individually programmes cells, ants, wolves, citizens, flowers and bumble bees to cooperate? Or are you saying that he invented a mechanism which would enable them all to work out their own particular designs?
> -There is a concept in object oriented programming called 'Instantiation' in which a template is used to create new and unique objects. Now, the blueprint itself covers every major aspect that any instance spawned from it will have, but it does not limit those instances to ONLY containing the information from the blue print. Variables, can be passed from various elements to help shape the way each instance will appear, but any variable that falls out side of the spec of the blueprint will cause an error and be discarded. So, to answer your question, he did both. He designed the base blueprint for each "kind" of creature, but allowed for variability within certain tolerances.-
> As regards 'first intelligence', I look forward very much to hearing your own hypothesis as to how a single entity of mindless energy might have acquired it.
> -I would point you to Ken Perlin. Patterns often emerge from random noise and become self-sustaining in terms of organization. Once the pattern has emerged, there is information their to learn from. So there is no need for matter to have been created prior to intelligence or information. YHWH refers to himself as "I am". How apropos that "I think therefore I am". -
>DHW: The energy in my mind is acquiring information all the time by its interplay with matter and with other energies. That is why I am suggesting that a single, pure energy would have nothing to learn. Hence my questions.-Introspective.. It could learn about it's own properties. Since waves comprise the foundation of nearly everything, I find that concept particularly fitting. ->DHW: In my scenario, energy mindlessly forms matter, and instead of energy becoming aware of nothing in particular, it becomes aware of the changing matter it is embedded in. You can if you like say it's lucky that individual "intelligences" were disposed to cooperate in the creation of life (and continue to do so). But then I can say it's lucky that your eventually intelligent God was disposed to creating life instead of spending eternity contemplating his energy. All we know is that life has resulted from cooperation. Whether that was directed by a single "intelligence" outside matter or by individual "intelligences" inside matter is pure speculation.-
I personally will disagree, and say that we know all life has resulted from unity, which is something that is extremely difficult to attribute to cooperation.


> dhw: You wrote: "The Genome is a chunk of code that reacts the way that it is programmed to react." Does this mean your God individually programmes cells, ants, wolves, citizens, flowers and bumble bees to cooperate? Or are you saying that he invented a mechanism which would enable them all to work out their own particular designs?- See my entry: Sunday, March 31, 2013, 16:13 @ David Turell. The cooperation at the cellular level is all automatic reactions by molecules, which have no idea of what they are doing. There is no mental state involved. All physico-chemical reactivity. Beautifully planned. Animals have some consciousness and that cooperation is partially instinct and partially mental planning. You cannot take cooperation at a mental level to cells!


> DHW: It is beyond my own imagining that you could have read the passage you have quoted, and thought for one second that it means randomness and competition have produced the universe and life! It begins with criticism of David's Darwinian post for overlooking the concept of COOPERATION. It goes on to explain in detail how COOPERATION produces harmony, and competition may produce discord, and I challenge you to find any mention of randomness. The whole point of this alternative hypothesis is that I find both chance and a god equally unlikely as "creators" of the universe and life. The quest for a third way is not "willful disbelief", but an attempt to find a scenario that dispenses with two unlikely hypotheses.-No one has overlooked cooperation. The problem is that cooperation does not explain the unity of the design, not to mention exponentially complicating the issue of 'first intelligence' by making it happen not once, but numerous times. -
> 
>DHW: Unlike David's, your version of God allows for the possibility that the original energy was mindless. How do you think mindless energy might have acquired intelligence, consciousness, information, ideas, purpose? I've pointed out that being aware requires something to be aware of. Why would pure energy become aware of pure energy? We know that matter exists, energy forms matter, and matter always changes. So this is something energy might have become aware of: the changing matter it has formed and in which it is embedded. An analogy: the genome is "aware" of the changes in the matter around it and reacts accordingly (or if it doesn't, the organism perishes). Every chunk of matter may therefore contain its own energy and so gather its own information. You seem to think that individualized intelligence of any kind automatically means destructive egotism, and you "wilfully" ignore the principle of COOPERATION. I showed in my examples that it's even possible for egotism to lead to cooperation between entities if that is in the interest of all parties, as we see so often in Nature. We ALSO see competition, but that is not what creates functioning bodies. Your own body is a huge mass of cooperating cells ... and in my hypothesis that is the result of multiple "intelligences" that have evolved from multiple chunks of matter. And so instead of a single entity for some unknown reason developing a colossally brilliant mind of its own, we have chunks of energy in chunks of matter gradually evolving their own "intelligence" which increases in complexity as they merge with one another. I do not have a problem if you find it unlikely, but you should not claim that it's based on randomness or competition, when the key is "INTELLIGENCE" and COOPERATION. In return, perhaps you will now offer me your own hypothesis as to how a single, universal entity of mindless energy might have acquired its own intelligence.-
The Genome is a chunk of code that reacts the way that it is programmed to react. I have written code myself that can do the same in a much more simplistic manner. I don't ignore the principal of cooperation, it just does not explain the unity of purpose that I see in everything that exists.It also does not explain all of the chicken and egg problems that we see. (See The Flower and the Bumble Bee post) The type of cooperation you describe would be virtually impossible in discreet organisms, for communication reasons if nothing else.

Tony: Yes, there is a unified purpose. It is written there for anyone to see as plainly as the words on this page. The problem is not in the clarity of the message, it is in the implications of the message. If purpose exists in all of creation, it implies a creator. If a creator exists, it implies that he might get sick and tired of our crap and do something about it, and that scares the hell out of people.
> 
> Here I disagree. Obvious purpose, yes, but the God of the OT is not thatvindictive. The Talmud softens the message. I've commented before about the reward and punishment side of religious thought. To me this is the only weak portion of your brilliant thinking presented here. I should have had you as the co-author of my book!-I've never believed that he was! However, people are afraid of what they don't understand, and it is virtually impossible to understand god on more than a superficial level. They are not afraid of any particular version of the almighty, rather they are afraid simply because something with that kind of power exists and is unknowable.


> Tony: You see competition between species, I see a self-righting system that maintains not only homeostasis, but also encourages personal growth. Not only do the living organisms play a part in this, but also the inorganic, as any changes in the inorganic composition or structure of the Universe at any scale would obliterate life. It is not random competition, but a carefully orchestrated balancing act infinitely more difficult than anything mankind has ever achieved. Orchestrated, concerted effort implies singular purpose.-Teleology fills the universe. Beautifully stated by this paragraph above 
> 
> Tony: If ANY element, from the first to the last, energy to life and everything in between, were to not act in harmony with this higher order it would cause wide spread devastation and the ultimate collapse of the system. Look how much devastation humanity causes in the ecosystem, and how far-reaching the consequences of our actions are. Consider the lowly bumble, without which all life on planet earth would likely die. We are not even a drop in the cosmic bucket, yet our actions have dramatic impact. How much more so if a single element, say hydrogen or zinc, were not in complete harmony with the system. Nothing, and I do mean absolutely nothing would function right. -We live in a designer universe with 120 exactly positioned parameters, with some requiring 10^120 decimal places! Another brilliant statement.-> 
> Tony: Yes, there is a unified purpose. It is written there for anyone to see as plainly as the words on this page. The problem is not in the clarity of the message, it is in the implications of the message. If purpose exists in all of creation, it implies a creator. If a creator exists, it implies that he might get sick and tired of our crap and do something about it, and that scares the hell out of people.-Here I disagree. Obvious purpose, yes, but the God of the OT is not thatvindictive. The Talmud softens the message. I've commented before about the reward and punishment side of religious thought. To me this is the only weak portion of your brilliant thinking presented here. I should have had you as the co-author of my book!

Tony: So.. essentially, the mutation rate is constant, except for when we observe it not being constant, 
> 
> Darwinism is not a constant theory but repeatedly shifts to fit unexpected observations. How to you defend quicksand theory?-I don't. I mock it relentlessly for the absurdity that it is. That entire post was a criticism at the ridiculousness of it all.


> Dhw: Indeed, the fact that the world is a mixture of order and disorder could even be taken as evidence against the concept of a single unifying purpose. 
> [/i]
> 
> DAVID: You miss the point that I see clearly. Life is meant to be experienced and filled with challenges. .... Darwin's use of competition is right on!
> 
> dhw: No problem with your philosophy. Just a problem understanding what it has to do with my answer to Tony's claim that multiple intelligences will not produce harmony.-My point is that order and disorder from your quote above is part of the overall plan. It creates life's challenges and competition. That is not evidence " against a single unifying purpose".

Tony: 
> "The molecular clock hypothesis states that DNA and protein sequences evolve at a rate that is relatively constant over time and among different organisms. A direct consequence of this constancy is that the genetic difference between any two species is proportional to the time since these species last shared a common ancestor. "
> 
> 
> THE concept of a molecular clock grew out of the observation that proteins appear to evolve at a nearly constant rate (ZUCKERKANDaLn d PAULING
> 1965; WILSON,C ARLSONa nd WHITE 1977). -And how do any of these observations fit into punctuated equilibrium appearance of all fossil data? They don't. It is like the eight-nine whale steps going from land to current forms. The changes between each step are enormous. Nothing gradual. 
> 
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Tony: So.. essentially, the mutation rate is constant, except for when we observe it not being constant, -Darwinism is not a constant theory but repeatedly shifts to fit unexpected observations. How to you defend quicksand theory?

Primate brains reorganized over 40 million years, so not just size countsure speculation...and it will never be anything more than that. It also means it is impossible to falsify the theory. I thought that was kind of a requirement in good science.-http://www.nature.com/news/dna-has-a-521-year-half-life-1.11555-Nature-&quot;The molecular clock hypothesis states that DNA and protein sequences evolve at a rate that is relatively constant over time and among different organisms. A direct consequence of this constancy is that the genetic difference between any two species is proportional to the time since these species last shared a common ancestor. &quot;-&#13;&#10;THE concept of a molecular clock grew out of the observation that proteins appear to evolve at a nearly constant rate (ZUCKERKANDaLn d PAULING&#13;&#10;1965; WILSON,C ARLSONa nd WHITE 1977). However, as early as 197 1, OHTA&#13;&#10;and KIMURA pointed out that the rates of evolution are not constant, but&#13;&#10;rather, they vary significantly from lineage to lineage. This observation has&#13;&#10;subsequently been verified by a number of people (e.g., LANGLEY and FITCH&#13;&#10;1974; KIMURA 1983). A common statistic that quantifies the variability in rates&#13;&#10;of evolution is R, defined as the ratio of the variance in the number of substitutionsin a lineage to the mean number. For proteins, R is usually in the&#13;&#10;range 1.0 < R < 3.4 (LANGLEYa nd FITCH 1974; KIMURA 1983; GILLESPIE&#13;&#10;1984b, among others).-There are two very different interpretations of these estimates of R. KIMURA&#13;&#10;(1983) claims that, as R is close to one, it suggests that evolutionary rates are nearly constant and that the events of molecular evolution may be approximated by a Poisson process (for which R = 1). This interpretation is also used to support the neutral allele theory, since the substitution process for this theory is close to a Poisson process (GILLESPIaEn d LANGLEY19 79; WATTERSON&#13;&#10;1982a,b).-A second interpretation is that inferences about the variance in&#13;&#10;evolutionary rates from the observed values of R are severely biased toward&#13;&#10;one (GILLESPIE1 98413, I986b). When this bias is accounted for, the fact that we can measure R values as large as two or three suggests that the real variance in evolutionary rates might be very large-so large, in fact, that molecular evolution may well be episodic, with bursts of substitutions separated by long periods with no substitutions.&#13;&#10;&#13;&#10;Genetics 113: 1077-1091 August, 1986.&#13;&#10;1078 J. H. GILLESPIE-&#13;&#10;&quot;One of the classic examples of a high mutation rate can be found in many bacteria and viruses. These organisms find it beneficial to mutate rapidly, because they reproduce in huge numbers, so losing numerous individuals doesn&apos;t hurt the species as a whole. The high rate of mutation also allows them to adapt to situations which can include the need to incubate for an extended period of time, or the introduction of new drugs which kill off many individuals within the species.&quot;-------------------------------------------------------------------------So.. essentially, the mutation rate is constant, except for when we observe it not being constant, and then it is because evolution allows for rapid adaptation for survivability, which of course did not happen for any other species but the ones we observed, because if it did that would bugger up our timelines. Oh, and since DNA can not survive more than a few million years, at best, you will never be able to falsify the 40 million year old divergence rate for which we have no evidence but assumption and speculation. Oh.. and one more thing, we have never recorded any 40 million year old DNA, so we don&apos;t REALLY have a baseline for these assumptions. We are not comparing modern humans to ancient humans, cause their DNA is pretty much the same and doesn&apos;t fit the theory. Instead, we are comparing modern human dna to monkey dna, cause we all evolved from monkeys you know, and then based on how they are different, we are estimating the time of divergence based on an assumption that is based on an enigma wrapped up in a mystery. What, you expected observations?-&#13;&#10;Sure.. I&apos;ll buy that.

dhw: There is no need at all for a single unified purpose, if by that you mean a universal intelligence binding everything together. Individual intelligences can bind themselves together, and create their own order. Indeed, the fact that the world is a mixture of order and disorder could even be taken as evidence against the concept of a single unifying purpose.&#13;&#10;> > &#13;&#10;> > David:You miss the point that I see clearly. Life is meant to be experienced and filled with challenges. Living a life in the Garden of Eden is boring. How do you know if you lived your life well unless you were challenged to overcome obstacles. One should always be introspective, self-analytic and know whether you lived life up to your expectations. Low expectation lives are seen everywhere. I don&apos;t have to list the types. High expectation lives are like the folks who visit this website, seeking and striving to find the bigger meanings as to why we were given this extraordinary gift, life. Darwin&apos;s use of competition is right on!&#13;&#10;> &#13;&#10;> Tony:So let me get this right.. not only do living cells have intelligence, but inorganic material has intelligence in the form of energy, and they all work together(yet compete against each other) in such perfect balance that life is able to appear and even thrive. Not only that, those living organisms, imbued with the same energy based intelligence, compete and struggle against each other and yet still manage to keep a near perfect balance so that life can continue for who knows how long... Is that right? Because if your inanimate objects do not have the same energy based intelligence(not to mention the agency to be able to effect change), then none of that makes a bit of sense.-I think you are directing the above comment to dhw. It doesn&apos;t follow as an answer to my paragraph. Living cells run on information, not intelligence. Intelligence obviously gave the cells the information in the genome.

dhw: There is no need at all for a single unified purpose, if by that you mean a universal intelligence binding everything together. Individual intelligences can bind themselves together, and create their own order. Indeed, the fact that the world is a mixture of order and disorder could even be taken as evidence against the concept of a single unifying purpose.&#13;&#10;> &#13;&#10;> You miss the point that I see clearly. Life is meant to be experienced and filled with challenges. Living a life in the Garden of Eden is boring. How do you know if you lived your life well unless you were challenged to overcome obstacles. One should always be introspective, self-analytic and know whether you lived life up to your expectations. Low expectation lives are seen everywhere. I don&apos;t have to list the types. High expectation lives are like the folks who visit this website, seeking and striving to find the bigger meanings as to why we were given this extraordinary gift, life. Darwin&apos;s use of competition is right on!-So let me get this right.. not only do living cells have intelligence, but inorganic material has intelligence in the form of energy, and they all work together(yet compete against each other) in such perfect balance that life is able to appear and even thrive. Not only that, those living organisms, imbued with the same energy based intelligence, compete and struggle against each other and yet still manage to keep a near perfect balance so that life can continue for who knows how long... Is that right? Because if your inanimate objects do not have the same energy based intelligence(not to mention the agency to be able to effect change), then none of that makes a bit of sense.